You’ve Got Mail (1998)

Directed by Nora Ephron. Starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey, Dave Chappelle, Jean Stapleton, Heather Burns, Steve Zahn, Dabney Coleman, John Randolph. [PG-13]

Nothing dates a 90s movie more than putting technology front and center in the plot; usually, this sort of thing negatively affects cyber-thrillers like The Net or Hackers (even Disclosure), but this is a rom-com advertisement for AOL and a fancy new thing they’re calling…what is it again?…email? It’s first and foremost a contemporary remake of The Shop Around the Corner (previously refurbished as a 1949 musical, In the Good Old Summertime), and, hey, why not go ahead and pursue that unwise strategy since the powers-that-be are reuniting Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, actors who are compulsively likable even though their last two pictures together were crap? She runs a quaint and cozy indie bookstore, he runs a chain of big corporate bookstores primed to put hers out of business, so they’re natural enemies, even though they’re unknowingly in love with each other—despite having significant others, both of them are carrying on secret emotional affairs with “strangers” via email correspondences, and, of course, those “strangers” are each other. It’s shallow, saccharine, overlong, and overrun with in-your-face product placement, but if you don’t mind seeing the stars slumming it, you may find it to be tolerable fluff. Misusing actors like Parker Posey (Hanks’ girlfriend) and Dave Chappelle (Hanks’ branch manager friend) is one of the movie’s less forgivable sins. Written by director Nora Ephron and her sister, Delia.

42/100